Pain is a hot potato, and I'm hungry

The past month or so has presented some exciting new challenges. My bike was stolen from out of my house. My email account was broken into by an anonymous gem-of-a-person who did some nasty things to violate my privacy. A person I loved and confided in fled the scene and started a new life somewhere else without informing me first.

Ouch. Life. I have felt not-a-little heartbroken and not-a-little bewildered by these occurrences, and yet somehow I'm grateful, too.

The winds of change (which often smell like farts and garbage) have a way of giving you an opportunity to grow even as they stink up your life. I've been led to a deeper inquiry on how to deal with difficult emotions: sadness, anger, abandonment, and paranoia, to name a few.

In one instance of suffering, a dear friend of mine sent me this Sufi saying, which I keep coming back to:

"Overcome any bitterness that may have come to you because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you.

"Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is part of her heart and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing the totality of that pain.

"You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity. The secret is to offer your heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering into joy."

To put it in a simpler, less mystical way, for those of you who can't dig on religion and have never dropped acid: Life hurts. We all hurt. The challenge is to learn to react from awareness, rather than ego-driven habit, so that we don't keep hurting ourselves and others.

In my experience, there are habitual ways that we react to pain as unconscious means of seeking refuge from it. We say "if only things were different than the way they are..." as though we occupied a seat at the top of some mental control tower.

We get urges to have, to do, to improve. We make war, point blame, or try to get rid of the way we are feeling altogether.

We try to prove ourselves to others. We put on masks and craft story lines about what has been done to us.

We do things to hurt other people; it's easier to pass pain onto someone else than to find the patience, courage, and guidance we need to pause and experience our sorrows in a way that is healthy.

Here's a start. Take a sheet of paper, and write the following phrase 20 times or more:

I deserve love.

There's a good chance that many of you reading this just chortled, scoffed, cringed, or shook your heads at such a touchy-feely suggestion (ugh, gross, affirmations!). But I can assure you that if you reacted in any of the above ways, you are probably among those who need it most. Check in: What do you have to lose? What are you afraid of?

In my experience, hesitation is a pretty clear sign that you are hiding something from yourself. Don't you want to know what it is?

Be courageous, or just prove me wrong: get out your pen and paper (and possibly a box of tissues) and see what comes up. No one has to know, so there is no reason to feel silly or ashamed. Write it, as many times as you can:

I deserve love.